Every culture on the planet has some form of drumming, and the New School’s Introducing World Drumming course is a practical, hands-on introduction and exploration of world drumming and rhythm traditions. Designed for absolute beginners, the course course combines three essential elements to give participants a solid grounding in hand percussion from around the world:

Learning how to play various world percussion instruments, including djembes, congas, bongos, dumbeks and assorted frame drums.

Exploring the commonalities and differences of African and Latin American drumming and rhythms.

Illustrating their applications in contemporary music.

Along the way, we will learn various hand drumming techniques and improve our rhythmic vocabulary with a combination of technical instruction, improvisation and ensemble skills, traditional ‘call and response’ aural learning and various notation and phonetic systems. All instruments are provided for use in the course, although it will be useful to have a hand percussion instrument in order to practice the rhythms and techniques at home.

Have you enrolled in this course? Download our Introductory Handout for tips on how to get the most from it.

Marek Przekwas

Marek received a degree in Cultural Studies from the University of Wroclaw in Poland before moving to Ireland. He was first introduced to world drumming at Waltons New School of Music and has since studied African drumming with the Guinean National Ballet soloist Libon Traoré in Guinea and the djembe grandmaster Mamady Keïta in Senegal, as well as Afro-Cuban drumming with Frailan Morán of the Afro-Cuban All Stars. Marek has performed as a drummer with a range of different groups, including Manden Express, a West African jazz ensemble (dundun and calabash); Afo, a West African percussion ensemble (djembe and dundun); Wassa Wassa, an African percussion group (solo djembe); Almond Blue, a jazz/bossa/swing group (congas, bongos and other percussion); and Village of Peace, an international reggae group (congas, bongos and other percussion). An energetic and creative teacher, he has taught world drumming at the New School and both African and Afro-Cuban drumming privately, and he has also given drumming workshops at the Body & Soul Festival, Electric Picnic and at community centres across Dublin.

2017-2018 Third Term Course Schedule & Fee

Enrolment

Enrolment for this course requires a completed Enrolment Form and full payment of the course fee. Places are limited to eight, and are available on a first-come, first-served basis, based on the date of enrolment. A number of our group courses fill in advance of their start dates, and early enrolment is recommended.

Two weeks before the end of each Introducing course, participating students will be given options for continuing their tuition at the school if they’d like to do so. Although a continuation ‘Improvers’ course cannot generally be scheduled on the same day/time as the Introducing course, one can be arranged if enough students would like to continue and the teacher has timetable availability. Students can also continue their tuition with private (one-to-one) lessons or ‘partner’ lessons with another class member (see Tuition Options – Private • Partner • Small Group Lessons). We are happy to discuss these options with you.